Fool's World: Prison Break (ch. 29) (Patreon)

"Zuko lied, but Iroh's answer lined up with the consensus," I said, drawing a circle around the stretch of ocean between Kyoshi Island and Omashu. Some of it had been guesstimates by members of the crew, but the firebenders had better intel. Some were downright honest, not hesitating in the slightest to sell out the Fire Nation, but others tried to mislead us. They were close to the truth, enough so that if we pressed later, they could say that they had only been a little off. That they tried to give us what we wanted. Enough to get a little leeway when the time came to decide their fates.

Suki stood next to me, the Kyoshi Warrior map also on the table. "It's not in line with our intel, though." She pointed out -- the Fire Nation had done us a favor and gifted us plenty of maps to work with. From sea charters to maps of the Earth Kingdom, Water Tribes, and the location of Air Temples.

"It's probably out of date," Nobara pitched in, her arms crossed as she looked down at the maps. She didn't really know how to read them, but the message was clear regardless. The map that Suki provided and the intel gleaned by the prisoners had a degree of overlap, but the wiggle room was three hundred square miles. A lot of room for mistakes.

"We only have this ship and without the benders, we don't have any offensive capabilities," Rin pointed out, resting her head on a hand as she propped herself up on the edge of the table. "The Fire Nation fleet has anywhere between six to twelve. If we don't get the drop on them first, then our already pitiful chances bottom out." She was right. The command room fell silent because everyone knew that she was right. So far, we had managed to put a good first step forward, but it was hardly good enough that a defeat couldn't kill our momentum.

My gaze lifted upwards, towards the pointed bow of the ship. Glancing down at the maps and compass, I shifted my gaze a little in the direction of the fleet and closed my eyes. I could feel my influence intensely in those below deck, the benders divided up while the Fire Nation crew worked for us. All of them had rebellious thoughts, but I snuffed out rebellious action before they could take their first steps towards it. While there were a lot fewer people in this world, my influence quickly became background noise to me in the back of my head when I wasn't paying attention.

Directly ahead of me… a boy stealing his sister's toy because she made him angry. Hate towards the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, but it was impersonal and general. Closer was… a man plotting to murder his guard. A guard denying a starving man food and took a sadistic glee from it. Contempt for those that he found beneath him…

"Adjust course fifteen degrees to starboard," I instructed, my gaze going to the map. Unfortunately, sensing my influence didn't come with a convenient way to measure distance, but drawing a straight line from our adjusted course on the map did put the fleet dead center of the overlap.

Rin didn't look surprised, "That doesn't change the fact that we're still outnumbered, even if we can find them."

"I'll just take an old page out of history," I responded. "Pirates kept the flags of all nations on board and would hoist them so their prey would think that they were an allied ship. Once they were close enough, they'd hoist the blackflag and if that wasn't enough for an immediate surrender, they'd take the ship by force," I explained while Nobara gave me a dull look.

"You're enjoying the idea of being a pirate way too much," Nombara remarked, earning an agreeing nod from Rin. Suki, on the other hand, was thinking over the idea.

She was coming around on it. "We could feign distress. Cut off our engines and let them stumble upon us. We have armor, so we could pretend to be them -- the Fire Nation had codes for this, but we don't need the trick to keep working for long. All we need to do is get on board one prison barge. With the earthbenders on board getting some earth to bend, our chances coming through this go way up," Suki voiced her support.

Rin and Nobara offered matching shrugs, knowing that they were outside of their areas of expertise. Suki had been a guerrilla fighter for the entirety of her life, while I… I dug through my memories. There were precious few pirates that had managed to master the use of fear and pain like Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard to the world at large. I couldn't recall everything I had influenced him to do, but I did know that I spent a lot of time being the devil on his shoulder.

"Before we commit to this," I spoke up, looking between Suki, Rin, and Nobara. "I want to make something clear -- even if this goes perfectly and we capture every enemy ship and every earthbender and firebender want to join us… we stand absolutely no chance against this fleet," I said, pointing on the blockade fleet that patrolled around the Fire Nation islands to prevent any unauthorized landing. According to our prisoners, the fleet was three hundred ships strong and all of them battle-ship class.

I saw that I had their attention, though Nobara seemed to have an idea where this was going. "This isn't going to end quickly. We could need years of perfect victories to build up our strength enough that we have a chance of breaking that blockade by challenging their defensive fleet. To that end, I will do everything I can to make sure we get those perfect victories. Ideally, making them surrender before the fight even starts."

"By tying the guts of prisoners to the prow and tossing them overboard?" Nobara questioned and Suki seemed shocked that was even an option.

"If that's what it takes. The reason why ships surrendered to pirates was out of fear of the consequences if they didn’t,” I answered, my tone blunt. “We use fear to avoid bleeding ourselves in the thousand battles to come. It’s going to be brutal. I won’t lie about that. But, soon enough, rumors about us and what we do will be exaggerated to the point that only the most stubborn of enemies will try to risk a fight.”

Nobara narrowed her eyes at me, searching my face. “So, it’s a necessary evil then?”

That brought me up short, I had to admit. I opened my mouth to respond, only to find that the words wouldn’t really come. I hadn’t noticed it until it was too late, but I had fallen face-first into a justification that I loathed -- the necessary evil. For thousands of years, I had whispered those same words into peoples ears to justify unimaginable deeds. That the horror that was inflicted was the lesser evil. The only excuse that got more mileage was the lie of the 'greater good'.

It was different, I reflected, when you had skin in the game. Those justifications became a lot easier to swallow. They made sense. Especially when you needed to win and the odds were stacked against you. After all, what was better? Losing or a little cruelty? Dragging out the evil would make a mountain of suffering, but choosing the lesser evil now would end it with a molehill. It was a completely different perspective than I was used to. I had always been the devil on the shoulder, a whisper in the ear.

I’ve never once cared about the causes that were being fought for. I never cared about the people involved. Now I did and I found myself leaning towards hypocrisy.

I was saved from having to answer when Suki spoke up, “Battle is battle, but I will not accept the execution of prisoners. Neither will the Fire Nation. In the past hundred years, there have been understandings made between the Fire Nation and the rest of the world and one of them is that butchering the surrendered will be responded with more butchery.” Suki pinned a sharp glare at me, “If you try to murder any prisoners, I won’t just standby. I will stop you.”

Good. “Alright. I’ll think of something,” I told her, earning a curt nod from Suki before she left the command room. Leaving me, Rin, and Nobara, whose expressions told me that the matter hadn’t been dropped.

“How far are you willing to go to win the war, Majima?” Rin asked me, and it sounded like an honest question rather than a condemning one. “Since I’ve known you, you’ve always been a brutal fighter, but you’ve never been cruel. The line between them is a thin one, Majima. I don’t want you stepping over it.”

“Or hurting yourself,” Nobara pitched in, seeming distinctly unhappy with me at the moment. “You feel the suffering of every evil deed, right? So, don’t you even think about doing some inflicted torture routine.” She jabbed an accusatory finger in my direction. She wasn’t exactly wrong there, but suffering kinda… You could only feel the suffering of being burnt alive so many times or crushed, or stabbed, or drowned before things eventually became… meh. It was always there, kinda like chronic pain, but eventually, you just learned to live with it. Because the only other alternative was that you didn’t.

“You’re making it sound a lot worse than it actually is, but point taken. I’ll think of something else to work with,” I decided before I began rolling up the various maps. “Before we do that, first we should win the actual battle, yeah?”

…

We cut off our engines long before we came in contact with the prison barges, letting our momentum carry us in their direction to make us appear like a ship left adrift. The prison fleet was a total of eight ships -- four of which were prison barges for earthbenders, and the other four were battleships. It was pretty easy to tell the difference between them because the battleships were fucking huge. In terms of size, our ship was more of a sloop even though it was a pretty big ship. The prison barges were each more like a man o' war in terms of size.

The Fire Nation battleships wouldn’t seem that much smaller when compared to a modern-day battleship. They completely dwarfed the smaller ships that they protected. Now that we were closer, I could feel my influence on the ships a lot clearer. The number of them blurred together but I was putting the ballpark estimate of the number of people on each ship at about five hundred people -- with the battleships, that number was all soldiers and sailors, but the prison ships seemed to have a more even split between Fire Nation and prisoners. Meaning, if all goes well, that was a thousand earthbenders waiting to be rescued.

I was dressed in Fire Nation armor that had been liberated from our prisoners. I found that it fit me well enough, though the helmet was hell to look through. The intimidation factor wasn’t at all worth it, but I had to wear it on account of my scars. The Fire Nation flag was upside down, a mark of distress according to the prisoners and I know they hadn’t been lying. After all, to intentionally deceive someone else in the hopes that harm would come to them as a result of that lie was an evil.

“We’re clear on the plan?” I questioned one last time, everyone on the bow dressed as Fire Nation as we drifted closer and closer to the prison fleet that changed course towards us. Below deck were the Kyoshi Warriors. In terms of pure numbers, we didn’t have a chance in hell of pulling this off. Which is why we needed to liberate the prison barges first and foremost. What's more, their numbers were divided up among eight ships. The only real risk was the Fire Nation's awareness of that fact and their potential willingness to act upon it by firing upon their own ships.

"We're ready," Rin answered, getting a thumbs up from the Kyoshi Warriors in the command room and from the lookout from below deck.

I took a breath and let it out, "Good, because it's time." The prison fleet was rapidly approaching, the battleship escorts utterly dwarfing our ship in terms of size twice over. They cast a long shadow over us as the battleship on the right wing sailed on our right, leaving a massive prison barge that wasn't that much smaller than the battleships on our left. We entered the enemy formation. That had been the goal, but I couldn't help but feel like we had stepped into the jaws of the beast.

The fleet slowed to a stop and on the prison ship, a reedy man peeked over the railing, looking down at our ship. "I'm unaware of any nearby fleets that you could be a part of. State your identity and purpose, soldier," he said, sounding like he was a man that was used to being obeyed.

"We aren't a part of a fleet, sir! We're Prince Zuko and General Iroh's escort ship, the Angi's Revenge. My name is Akai, acting captain because the prince and General Iroh are indisposed," I shouted up at them, and I felt the intentions to attack take a sharp nosedive upon hearing that. Instead, I sensed the vile desire to take advantage of another's misfortune.

"I see! I am Vice Admiral Uzo of the eighth prison fleet, at Prince Zuko's service. What happened to leave you adrift, soldier?" He asked, and I'm pretty sure that was because he already forgot the fake name that I gave him.

Behind my back, I gestured to get ready. "We encountered the Avatar, sir! An Airbender! We captured him for a time, but his allies managed to free him and wreck our engines while they were at it. The last thing we managed to do was put the rudder in position to head in your direction," I told him, watching Uzi's eyes widen and he looked like he was trying to keep a smile off of his face.

The guy looked like a scumbag, to be blunt. He appeared to have just left his middle aged years behind him, with spots of white in his hair that was pulled back into a bun with wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. On his upper lip was a very thin mustache that almost looked like he had a milkstasce because of how white it was. His dark eyes were filled with greed and joy that an opportunity had just fallen into his lap.

"And the Avatar?" He questioned, and I pointed in the direction of the mainland.

"He was headed eastward, sir," I told him, giving him nothing concrete beyond a best guess, and in the opposite direction that Aang had actually gone in.

Uzo seemed a bit displeased that the Avatar was fleeing his operation range so he couldn't snag him, but he refocused on the matters at hand. "Very well -- I'll lower a team of engineers to your ship to inspect the damages done to your vessel." And with that proclamation, the guards on the ships dropped and I had to fight off a smile on my face.

"Thank you, sir!" I shouted back up at him. This is why doing things by the books was so important. It's why you had to do pain in the ass things that seemed so counterintuitive and tedious. Because, the moment that you didn't, that could be the moment that you missed the chance to identify a disguised enemy all because you forgot to ask for the password. All for greed and a chance to impress royalty.

Their guards dropped and I gave the signal. Those that were disguised as Fire Nation soldiers began to shift the harpoons that Zuko had used to act as a tightrope to reach the beach. There were six in total, and almost as one, all six shot out to latch against the bow of the ships that flanked us. The thick wire went taut, offering a fairly steep but manageable incline up to the ships. As soon as the tightropes went taut, I broke into a dead sprint as the attack began in truth.

The Kyoshi Warriors poured out from the command room and below deck, sprinting up the wires. Our numbers weren't many. There were only about a hundred Kyoshi Warriors, plus me, Rin, and Nobara. Against a grand total of three thousand Fire Nation soldiers. Most of the warriors went to the battleship, along with Rin and Nobara, leaving me with Suki and then others as we attacked both ships at once.

Nearing the end of the tightrope, I leapt high into the air as I projected a dozen baseball bats behind me. My gaze met Vice admiral Uzo, who was in the middle of shouting orders to the soldiers that had just dropped their preparations to attack or board. The barge had a pit in it that went down a good twenty feet, leaving the railing where the Fire Nation soldiers gathered. Picking my targets, I launched the baseball bats with punishing speed and they shot off like bullets towards the heads of enemy soldiers.

This wasn't a fight that I needed to show off with or needed to keep people alive for the sake of information. My baseball bats struck the enemy soldiers, crushing their metal helmets around the tip of the bat, and their skulls didn't receive any better treatment. My magic circuits flared within my body, sending the tingling of magic coursing through my veins, as I projected more bats and fired them as soon as I was able while I flipped through the air to land on the railing that overlooked the pit.

Two hundred and fifty pairs of eyes looked up at me, curious about what was going on. Landing heavily, I took the moment to yank off my helmet and toss it down, revealing my face. "You're being freed! So, help us out a little," I shouted down at them and I saw a variety of earthbenders. Old men, kids, and everything in between. All of them were male, though. I still wasn’t exactly clear on how bending worked on a genetic level, but I hadn’t heard anything about only guys being able to earthbend so the women were probably kept separately on a different ship.

As I spoke, a baseball bats projected behind me, becoming a semi circle over my shoulders before I shot them out at rapid speeds. From what I saw, the only way to get out of the pit was a single door, so I used my bats to create a stairway out of the pit and to the railing. There was a fair amount of hesitation in the faces below, a lot of confusion, but one man was quick to leap to his feet and begin climbing. He was the one that broke the spell and prompted other to follow him.

“Secure the harpoons!” I shouted at the Kyoshi warriors that had followed me, the harpoons left unguarded because of our sudden attack. I threw myself into the thick of the fighting, lashing out at every Fire Nation soldier that came with me with all of my strength as I Reinforced my body. It was overkill for them, but it made sure that I didn’t get bogged down in a slugging match. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Suki fire off a harpoon at another battleship, preventing it from escaping. Nobara and Rin managed to do the same with the ship they were on, locking down about half of the fleet.

The fleet didn’t remain idle, though. The first lob of fire arched through the air from one of the battle ships, sailing through the air before crash landing on the deck of the prison ship, sending oil and fire everywhere. It made it easy to spot the firebenders, I noticed because it was only them that managed to prevent themselves from being caught on fire. My bats shot forward as I leapt into the flames, giving them no quarter or mercy. Bones shattered under my blows, and that was if they were lucky.

More fire fell from the sky while the earthbenders scaled out of the pit, throwing themselves at the Fire Nation with their bare hands because they had nothing else. Some managed to fight with the spears and swords that were in the fallen soldiers hands, but it was quickly turning into a brutal melee. I spotted someone sprinting towards the doors to the interior of the ship -- firing off a bat at his back, I got him just as the door swung open.

“Take cover inside! Secure the ship!” I shouted, and the prisoners didn’t need to be told twice because they were already forcing their way into the ship with their looted weapons. Suki led the charge while the battle led into the interior of the prison ship. Before long, I was nearly left alone on the deck of the burning deck.

Trusting that Suki had this ship under control with the few warriors that she had, I turned my attention to one of the other ships that we had hooked. Gritting my teeth, I tried to sort through the evil intentions that surrounded me. With so many people, it was difficult to sort them out. There was aa lot of desires for vengeance, to kill, maim, to make others suffer and so on. That was white noise to me as I searched for a specific whisper that I was giving whoever was the next in charge in this kind of situation.

I found it.

Picking the battleship that had served as the point for the fleet, I sprinted onboard using the cable as a bridge. The firebenders were prepared. While they hadn’t dislodged the harpoon, they had three firebenders arranged on the point of contact and sent three streams of fire in my direction. Right when the fire covered me, I projected my bats to protect me from the flames while I shot forward. When the streams of fire ended, I saw a number of shocked faces as I leapt onto the ship.

My gaze landed on the man who was being influenced to do the thing I was worried about -- sinking the prison ships as a precautionary measure. My foot dug into the metal deck, warping it under my foot before I launched myself forward, a half dozen bats forming behind me that I used to swat away the Fire Nation soldiers that tried to come close. They had no chance of slowing me down while I sent a dozen bats in the direction of the crews using the catapults.

“No, get away-!” The acting admiral shouted as I neared, his expression becoming one of pure terror as I got closer and closer. I wonder what was going through his head. What did he see when he looked at me? Iroh seemed pretty convinced I was some kind of spirit or demon.

And, I suppose thats what I would have to become if I wanted to do this right. The odds were stacked against us. I hadn’t exaggerated when I said that we had years and thousands of battles to get through to gather enough strength that we could challenge the Fire Nation. Worse, it wasn’t like they would be content to just let us gather our strength. We had a very long time fighting a lot of uphill battles ahead of us.

“Just for a little while,” I spoke to myself, clashing against the acting admiral that sent a fearful torrent of fire in my direction, not even caring that his own men were caught up in the blast. I emerged from the otherside unschathed, gripping my bat and raising it high. “Just for a little while…”

“I’ll be Angra Mainyu,” I told myself, bringing my bat down and crushing the acting admirals skull. “God of Darkness. King of Daemons and Curses… and Source of All Evil.”

And the greatest hypocrite of them all.